Apple's iOS 6 3D Flyovers aim to be more helpful, less creepy than Google Street View

Apple is incorporating advanced 3D imaging to bring a variety of new features to iOS users, from building outlines to topographical terrain to fully rendered 3D models that not only replace Google's StreetView, but offer to provide 360 degree views across neighborhoods, behind buildings and even off roads.

However, there are a variety of attractive features Google has bundled into its web and app-based Google Maps portfolio, providing a tall order for anyone hoping to replicate all those features. Apple certainly has big shoes to fill in the maps department. Among these are:

Google's 3D models and StreetView maps

Google Earth began mapping the world with 3D building outlines, a feature Google later brought into the Android version of its mobile maps client. Apple never adopted these 3D models however, so all iOS users see in the current iOS 5 Maps client is a 2D depiction of the building outlines Google has added to the bit mapped tiles it serves Apple's Maps client, without any ability to freely rotate the map (below, in contrast with Google's 3D massing models visible in Google Maps for Android).

More recently, Google has introduced 3D features that essentially paint images from aerial photography onto building outlines, resulting in a nearly photorealistic 3D model that users can explore from different angles. These features require significant client-side processing power to render, and just as with Google's basic 3D outlines, Apple hasn't ever incorporated them into its iOS Maps client.

In order to provide an explorable map that is efficient in both processing and bandwidth requirements (compared to 3D model rendering), Google first began its StreetView project, which sends out vehicles to all major roads, taking panoramic images that users can then access in a "you are there" view of virtually any block face visible from virtually any significant road Google's camera-equipped cars have traveled.

Conceptually, StreetView can be dated back to an ARPA project developed at MIT, which in 1978 began mapping the town of Aspen, Colorado, using photographs stored on interactive Laserdisc, allowing users to virtually walk down streets, and even bring up seasonal views of the town from multiple perspectives.

The Aspen Movie Map was one of the first advanced examples of hypermedia, and was described by a young Steve Jobs in a 1983 speech describing the future potential of personal computing.

"It's really amazing," Jobs said, describing the project in contrast with conventional, static forms of old media. "It's not incredibly useful," he added as the audience laughed, "but it points to some of the interactive nature of this new medium which is just starting to break out from movies, and will take another five to ten years to evolve."

Ten years later in 1994, Apple would release QuickTime VR, which allowed photographers to stitch together photos taken from a single location into a node that viewers could later explore dynamically, creating a new type of movie where playback was no longer fixed along a linear progression. Users could also jump between nodes, effectively exploring a virtual model of a real or imagined universe one spot at a time (or, alternatively, view an object from multiple perspectives).

QuickTime VR finds a use, 13 years later, in StreetView

While a variety of companies copied or extended upon Apple's work on QuickTime VR, there was never a huge market for the technology. That is, until Google realized that panoramic photography would make an ideal way to efficiently allow Google Maps users to explore the world right from their web browser.

Thus, Google's StreetView exploited a useful application for the QuickTime VR technology Apple pioneered commercially in 1994, four years before Google was founded as a company and 13 years before Google debuted StreetView in 2007.

While not without controversy from privacy advocates (and with government stopping Google's work of StreetView mapping the world in countries like Australia, Germany and India), Google has effectively covered vast areas of Europe, Russia, North America, Brazil, Japan, Thailand, South Korea and South Africa with its camera cars.

Apple incorporated support for StreetView in iOS 2.2 Maps in 2008, but accessing the feature is not necessarily obvious; users must drop a location pin, bring up its information panel and then tap the StreetView icon to view a local panorama image of the spot (if its is available, and not obscured by passing vehicles or other obstructions).

Users can then step along the street in increments, turn down other mapped streets, and get close enough to houses to see right in homeowners' windows.

On the web, Google still relies upon the Adobe Flash plugin to view StreetView panoramas, making them inaccessible to iOS users outside of Apple's specially designed Maps client. In iOS 6, Apple has removed the ability to access Google's StreetView images.

Duplicating Google's four years' worth of efforts in mapping streets from the ground level would be an enormous task (although other mapping companies have started doing this). But instead of skating to where the puck was in 2007, Apple has started promoting a new, overlapping feature for Maps in iOS 6: Flyover.

The problem with Apple's approach is this: In everyday life, how often are you looking for a place in "the big city" versus some place "around town"? I'm not talking about living in the sticks, I'm talking about the difference of living just a few miles away from downtown.

When you are looking for visual landmarks in these areas, there are no 3d models or views and, without them, the 2d map image quality is substandard (lower resolution satellite imagery than what we had with Google maps). So how, exactly, is that going to be better?

I REALLY hope the 2d map image data improves in quality before the release. Speaking as someone who uses his iPhone for geocaching, it is clearly a step backwards in terms of image quality right now.

This topic was discussed on one of Gruber's Podcasts a few weeks ago. I agree with the argument for including a "Street View" feature in maps. In general, most people don't visualize the world in "birds-eye" view. We walk on the ground and view things from street level. How many people do you know that have been totally lost when looking at paper map? There were other points being made for a street view, but you'll have to listen to the podcast for that.

Here's a couple examples of why street view might be more helpful than fly-over:

if you're looking for a specific location but don't know which side of the street it's on, can't see that very clearly from fly-over.
if you're staying at a hotel, but don't know what's around you or just want to check out the adjacent businesses.
you're house/apartment hunting and want to see the conditions of the neighboring properties.
you're looking for a business and know the general block/location, but not the address. Street view can zoom in on addresses.
you know the building you're looking for to pick someone up, but don't know where the main entrance is.

Granted my points here aren't that strong, but you get the idea.

Wow, I never knew you could do street view in the current maps app. Way to hide that one on us Apple!

This topic was discussed on one of Gruber's Podcasts a few weeks ago. I agree with the argument for including a "Street View" feature in maps. In general, most people don't visualize the world in "birds-eye" view. We walk on the ground and view things from street level. How many people do you know that have been totally lost when looking at paper map? There were other points being made for a street view, but you'll have to listen to the podcast for that.

Here's a couple examples of why street view might be more helpful than fly-over:

if you're looking for a specific location but don't know which side of the street it's on, can't see that very clearly from fly-over.
if you're staying at a hotel, but don't know what's around you or just want to check out the adjacent businesses.
you're house/apartment hunting and want to see the conditions of the neighboring properties.
you're looking for a business and know the general block/location, but not the address. Street view can zoom in on addresses.
you know the building you're looking for to pick someone up, but don't know where the main entrance is.

Granted my points here aren't that strong, but you get the idea.

Wow, I never knew you could do street view in the current maps app. Way to hide that one on us Apple!

Pretty much my thoughts on the issue. While Flyover is "technically" impressive, Street View is much more useful IMHO. As a NC boy, it was VERY useful when my wife and I took a trip to NYC for our one-year anniversary.

What we really need is 3D models with Street View level data. I like the information Street View gives me - I can "walk" a path before I go there and figure out exactly where I need to go - but the UI is clunky and tedious to use because you can't do it fluidly. Combining the two technologies would give the best results, or at least once the hardware can handle it. Right now it feels like neither solution is perfect although Street View is more useful.

I've been using iOS 6 since the first beta and while Maps has improved significantly I do miss Street View. There is no substitute for finding an address by taking a virtual stroll down the street.

After my initial "fun" with FlyOver I have not used it since. I simply don't see how this feature will be useful in finding a location. On top of that, in an area with any substantial structures you can't even begin to see the street because the height of the building is blocking your view.

I have no problem with this feature being included but i do have a problem with a useful being removed. If Apple wanted to compete Google on mapping then why not make their own Street View. I can't imagine there are patents that prevent Apple from strapping a camera to a car, it's in how the tech is executed after that.

Couldn't use the tech with FlyOver to get very detailed digital images that are very precise in how far away from the edges of the buildings they are so regardless of how far the vehicle is on the street you could adjust your viewing position to be on the sideway and still get the same perspective. I'd personally like a tech that would recognize every vehicle shape and people so that Apple's version of Street View would eliminate all those elements from the image with the tech that allows FlyOver to see so many angles at once. Nice clean streets without mobile object blocking facades an signage.

I really feel bad for all you people who have to rely on a mapping program to find your way and better yet, you need pictures to know if you on the right street or in front of the right store or restaurant. Are you completely lost if your battery dies? Yeah most guys hate asking for direction, but it is not that hard to find a location, you all know streets have names and building have numbers.

I will tell you and I have seen this with Google maps a number of time, it takes you to the wrong physical locations, it will say a place in one locate and the stupid street view is correct for where you are standing but, the actual place it down the road a piece with the correct address and all. So you can be standing there looking at the map with the pin and a street view picture showing you are in the right place but you did not find what you were really looking for. However, if you were just looking for house or building numbers you would have known you were not there yet.

The best part of this, I personal seen these Google maps mistake in Mountain View CA the home of Google, you think they would gave their own neighborhood perfect.